Hurricane Dora
Hurricane Dora was the first and, to date, the only hurricane to make landfall on the
First Coast region of
Florida; more specifically, the metropolitan area of
Jacksonville. Before it came ashore at
St. Johns County just after midnight on
September 10,
1964, no hurricane had made landfall there since record-keeping began in
1851.
Dora originated as a low pressure area near
Cape Verde on
August 28. On
September 2, the storm had quickly strengthened into a
hurricane over 1,000 miles east of the Leeward Islands. Moving northwest, Dora continued to intensify, with a current path thought originally to suggest a New England threat or a turn out to sea. However, a high pressure system to the north slowly forced Dora on a curve back to the west. While in the process of turning west, Dora peaked at 140 mph and slowed in forward movement. Dora then weakened back to a Category 2 hurricane while moving westward towards the northeast coast of Florida. Just before landfall on
September 9, Dora regained major hurricane status before weakening back to a strong Category 2 at landfall as the eye passed over
St. Augustine on the evening of September 9 with winds reported at 110 miles per hour at landfall.
The storm cut a path across the northern part of the state before finally making a track to the northeast on
September 12. As it moved into southwestern
Georgia, Dora was downgraded to a
tropical storm before moving back over Georgia and
South Carolina. The system circulated into the
Atlantic Ocean again, but by this time it was disorganized and dissipated completely soon after.
|
Newspaper headline from Dora |
Power supply for
Jacksonville and surrounding towns was lost; it was only restored after six days of outages.
Dora caused only one death, but did about $280 million ($1.5 billion in 2000 dollars) in damage, primarily due to extensive inland flooding.
Retirement
The name Dora was retired from the
Atlantic hurricane lists and was replaced with Dolly for the
1968 season.
*
List of notable Atlantic hurricanes*[ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archives/atlantic/prelimat/atl1964/dora/ NHC 1964 Preliminary Report on Dora]
*
Historic Images of Florida Hurricanes (State Archives of Florida)
